Four/Five/Six Strings & The Truth

Category

Railway

Finally the weather seems to be improving and I’ve been able to make a start on the garden for the summer. Celebrated with a few new plants. Shown here with a couple of wider shots of the garden as it stands. Watch this space for how things develop…

During our Easter holiday at Oxwich Bay we paid a visit to a local National Trust property. Aberdulais Tin Works and Waterfall is located just north of Neath and features a spectacular natural waterfall that was modified and industrialised in the 1800s.

It is a small site which you can visit comfortably in an hour or so before taking some refreshments in the old school house, which now serves as the the rooms. If you plan a visit there it’s worth finding another local site to visit too, to make a day of it. We chose the nearby Neath Abbey.

Most of the buildings are now in ruins, but the information provided on site tells the story of the tin plate industry and of the site’s previous business enterprises. There are two short background films to watch, the second of which is shown in an atmospheric darkened room inside the wheel house, it is projected into a mirror which gives something of a 3D effect.

As you tour through the site you also climb to the top of the falls, there are stairs and steps scattered across the site and also lift facilities, including wheelchair/pram lifts to get you to the top. The view from the top is quite spectacular and makes the visit doubly worthwhile.

We picked a day with perfect weather. Here are a few photos from the day.

Earlier this year I passed my fiftieth birthday and I wanted to mark the occasion with something special. Ordinarily we are not travellers, I have a serious health problem that can make things difficult and my wife really does not like being too far away from home. So our holidays every year are taken here in the UK, most often at the Gower, our favourite place of all.

For my fiftieth I decided we should venture a bit further afield, but I wanted it to be a place that was within easy reach of home. I work for the railway so we get some really great travel perks. So we applied for our passports for the first time ever and booked first class travel on the Eurostar to Paris for a four day trip.

I booked a hotel that was located opposite Gare-Du-Nord station to make the trip as easy as possible and we set off on October 27th.

We wanted to get in as many of the sights as possible, so we booked a two day pass on the open top, hop-on hop-off bus tour, which I would certainly recommend, it was excellent value and very convenient.

Whilst there we visited the Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeuer, Notre Dame and many other legendary places. We had an absolutely fabulous time, although it was exhausting. Paris is a huge, bustling metropolis, a multi-cultural hotpot with extravagant wealth and appalling poverty living right next to each other. We loved the short time we had there, here are a few photos to give a flavour of the trip.